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Austin Macauley Publishers - John Saxby

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149 pages

English

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The modern British police. Fast cars, blue lights, sirens wailing, doors smashed in, guns, bad guys thrown to the floor, the handcuffs lock. The cell door bangs shut, time to go down the boozer. Not bloody likely! Instead, join "A" shift of Harford Police Station as they battle bureaucracy and deal with the irritating pathetic nature of human squabbles and miserable needs. Domestic arguments, feral juveniles, rolling around the cell floors with drunks, the vile and the abusive, dirty and grimy houses, the lack of common sense in the criminal justice system, incompetent or ineffective supervisors, ridiculous rules and family tragedy. Struggling to deal with this negative world, PC Greg Lucas hides from reality, searching the World Wide Web and setting himself up for catastrophic consequences with the omnipotent Eastonshire Constabulary.

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	28 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528964180
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0175€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Fight the Good Fight
John Saxby
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-02-28
Fight the Good Fight About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement PART ONE THE JOB Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Late Shift, 1700–0200 Hrs Chapter Four Chapter Five Night Shift Chapter Six Early Turn Chapter Seven Late Shift… Chapter Eight 0800–1700 Hrs Chapter Nine Late Shift, 1700–0200 Hrs Chapter Ten Night Shift, 2200–0700 Hrs Chapter Eleven Late Shift, 1400–2200 Hrs Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Night Shift Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Late Shift… Chapter Sixteen PART TWO THE SIEGE Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen. Thirteen Days Earlier… Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Epilogue
About the Author
The author has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wolverhampton and briefly worked for British rail until joining the police. In 2009, he was diagnosed with OCD and left with fifteen years’ service. Now working in a DIY shop, he is 49 years of age, married and has one dog. He played an active part in a drama group for five years at a local theatre until the group disbanded. He reads historical fiction and also about the First World War, visiting the Western Front and other battlefields frequently. Other hobbies include model making, progressive rock music, wood work, gym classes and walking coastal footpaths.
Dedication
This book is respectfully dedicated to all those coppers who find themselves up against it.
Copyright Information ©
John Saxby (2020)
The right of John Saxby to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528923491 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528964180 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of the great British public in helping to shape him into the person that he is today.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Saint Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7.
Keep fighting the good fight:
“Act of individuality or integrity, or subversion of the system.”
Urban Dictionary.
PART ONE

THE JOB
Chapter One
Eastonshire Constabulary
Briefing Room
Market Harford Police Station 7 a.m.
PC Debbie Reeves entered the room carrying a tray of mugs and a large battered metal teapot. As the youngest serving officer on the ‘D’ shift, it was her job to make the tea for briefing until someone newer joined. She knew that it had nothing to do with being a woman.
The room was cramped. Essentially, no bigger than the box room that had been her bedroom as a child. She placed the tray onto the desk at the end of the room where Sergeant John Kerr was sitting. The rest of the shift sat looking miserable along the wall, crammed into chairs not designed for people wearing batons, utility belts and stab vests.
On the opposite wall was a white board which served as the projection screen for the daily briefing file on the computer in front of the sergeant.
Debbie poured six mugs of tea from the giant pot. Then it was a free for all as everyone jockeyed for the milky one, or the strong one and vied for the sugar and the one teaspoon.
Debbie took a vacant chair while this scramble took place. When it was done, her four colleagues squeezed back into their seats.
PC Ian Knight sat furthest from Debbie’s left, nearest to the sergeant. He was the oldest on the shift with twenty years in. He fought a constant losing battle with his waistline and was affectionately known as the ‘Old Charger’. This had nothing to do with charging criminals but was, in fact, a chivalric pun on his surname and his habit of referring to his wives, past and present as ‘Dragons’.
In between Debbie and Ian sat PC Greg Lucas. Five feet and eight inches tall with short dark hair and dark brown eyes. He too was showing symptoms of weight gain. A transferee from another force. He had been in ‘the job’ nearly thirteen years. He was an experienced detective. His last posting had been in a child protection unit in a diverse and challenging inner city.
Eastonshire Constabulary had chosen to post him back into a uniform role. Greg was not a happy officer. Things had changed a lot since he had last worn a police uniform. There had been no such thing as ‘Police Community Support Officers’ when he had previously worn a police uniform.
On Debbie’s right sat PC Dave Platt. A northerner with six years in the job. He was tall with a big moustache. Once, he had been a milkman. He was a keen runner. He absolutely hated the job and dreamed of becoming an Authorised Firearms Officer (AFO). This was his idea of escape from the purgatory of investigating crime. He would also get to drive an expensive flash car, bigger than the one he currently did.
Dave was the shift’s Initial Response Vehicle (IRV) driver. He had an advanced driving ticket which allowed him to drive the more powerful Skoda. When uncommitted, he was the first car the control room would call to send to a Grade 1 emergency such as a crime in progress or a serious accident.
Furthest from Debbie’s right, and closest to the door, perhaps in the hope that being able to bolt through it first would allow him to escape being allocated some awful and crap job, was PC Philip Mattock. He was six feet tall and in his mid-thirties. His waistline, hidden behind his stab vest was also less than athletic. He had eleven years in the job.
Like the others, he was thoroughly disillusioned with it and life. When on night shift, he would often drive his crew mate around the houses where he had once lived with his wife and child, before driving on to point out the house where they now lived with the man she had betrayed him for.
Many unflattering adjective’s describing the ex-Mrs Mattock and her partner would accompany this tale of woe.
John Kerr began to go through the briefing. There was nothing new on it. Look out for the same cars. Pay attention to these areas at these times etc. Be aware of these people and so on and so on.
What the shift wanted to know was what was in the papers the Sergeant had on the desk. They knew from night shift that there was a prisoner in. A drunk driver that would need charging when sober. That was easy enough.
But was there anything else? And if so, who was going to get it? They all had plenty of crimes to carry on investigating and that was before the control room sent them to jobs.
Debbie already knew what she would be doing that day. She was already written off to crew the ‘Diary Car’. This job was untouchable by the control room or anyone else.
When members of the public reported crimes or incidents, but did not need or were not available for an immediate visit, they could opt for a deferred visit. A mutually agreeable appointment would be made for the diary car to attend and take the details etc. The control room, or call-handling centre, would enter the incident details into the electronic diary for the car.
Every officer had access to this diary in the ‘public folders’ on the divisional web page on the computer. The officer who had been allocated the diary car tour of duty simply opened this diary, picked up the car keys and was committed for the day.
So that members of the public with appointments would not be let down, the officers had strict instructions that they would not become involved in any live job unless it unfolded before them or was life-threatening. Naturally, it was an unwritten rule that they would answer any police call for urgent assistance.
The management saw the diary car as a great success. They were blissfully unaware that it was more commonly known as the ‘shit job car’, or the Germanic sounding ‘Scheisenwagen’. Nobody at Harford actually knew any German but it sounded a likely translation.
Ian Knight got the prisoner. He beamed a smile to himself. That was easy enough and would keep him unavailable for a while. It was a forty-five-minute drive to Montford Leys Police Station where the detainee was. There were no cells at Harford. The management in their wisdom preferred Harford prisoners to be lodged the other side of the county. That was ninety minutes traveling time there and back. Who knew how long it would take to deal with the drunk and finish the file!
This decision left Greg, Dave and Phil in suspense. They had already rehearsed the lines in their minds as to why they were too busy to take the next shit job. Greg had to get a statement, Dave had to interview a driver from an accident and Phil had a fictitious appointment.
But there was nothing else. The three suddenly breathed more easily. Briefing was over. The officers picked up their car keys and notified the control room of their radio call signs. They all then sat down in front of computers which were spread around the building, logging on to look at their crime reports.
The same ritual every day, dreading to see if they had been allocated anything new and juggling to see if they could further progress the ones they already had to the filing stage that day.
As they left the room, Sergeant John Kerr also breathed a sigh of relief. That had been easy this morning. No problems or disputes. There had been nothing to test his poor grasp of procedures or inability to make decisions.
He had only been